Bootstrap Baby
by The Phantom
Summary: PreDMC. Because Bootstrap Bill is incredibly annoying.


Disclaimer: I own none of the characters within.

Author's Notes: I _hated _Bootstrap in DMC. He was so whiny and pathetic. Even my dad said, "Where did Will get all his kick-ass genes?" I was hoping that Bootstrap would end up being cool, but his doom was sealed when he shed that ridiculously huge tear when he had to whip Will. This fic was good therapy.

Quick note; I tried to find out the names of Davy Jones' crew, but was unable to match names to faces. Thus, we have Prickly-Face and Sharkhead. Don't bother to correct me, because I think it's funnier that way.

Dedicated to TK, who came out of the movie theater and announced, "I don't care what anyone thinks; Bootstrap Bill was _stupid._"

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Bootstrap Baby

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Rain was sluicing down through the murky night sky, drenching any sailor unfortunate enough to be caught in the storm, creating an atmosphere of astoundingly creepy proportions. There was even some dramatic lightning that knew exactly when to flash, highlighting any particularly intense moment that should unfold during the very intense weather. The whole spooky storm scene was punctuated by the dire strains of someone pouring their heart out on the keys of a monstrous pipe organ, a ghoulish fugue that accompanied the nighttime routine of the crew of the Flying Dutchman.

Now, technically they could wait until daylight to perform maintenance tasks on the pitching deck of their damned ship. They could at least wait until the weather calmed down a little bit. But it was captain's orders that they should wait until the middle of the murky night to do any work, and the bigger the storm, the better!

They were currently engaged in the very dramatic task of hauling a cannon up into the air. None of them were quite sure why they were doing it, but it looked really cool and awesome. Of course, in such nasty weather, people were bound to make mistakes. Even undead sailors have slippery hands, in fact, probably even slipperier than normal hands because they're all slimy and gross. Whatever the reason for the slipperiness, natural or unnatural, the slipperiness was there and the cannon ended up crashing down onto all the crew members who were milling around under it. Someone's head popped off and rolled around comically on the pitching deck. Tempers flared.

"Damn ye all, ye clumsy sons of whores!" screamed Whip-Guy.

He stalked furiously over to the source of the slipperiness, a relative newcomer who was only just beginning to have a tentacle sprout from his forehead. He cowered appropriately at the approach of his punishment.

"It'll be five lashes for ye, whelp!" roared Whip-Guy, spit flying from his mouth as he cracked his whip and lightning flashed dramatically. "There's no room for clumsiness on the Flying Dutchman!"

"Noooooo!"

At the familiar sound of that melodramatic cry, everyone rolled their eyes and groaned. The plea for mercy did not come, as one would expect, from the victim. It came from everyone's favorite soft-hearted eternally-damned pirate.

"This ain't your place, Bootstrap." muttered Sharkhead, shaking his head in exasperation. "Go find a corner and mope in it."

The lightning flashed again, illuminating Bootstrap Bill's perpetually wretched simper. His red-rimmed eyes leaked a constant flow of tears and his hands twisted together so miserably that he might just tear them off the wrists.

"It's not right!" Bootstrap fretted. "Don't punish him!"

"How is it not right, may I ask?" demanded Prickly-Face. "The bastard dropped a cannon on someone's head!"

"But he's only a boy." The lower lip was starting to jut out. "Don't hurt him."

"Look. Bootstrap." Sharkhead had to stuff his hands in his pockets to keep from strangling him. "This is a pirate ship. An eternally damned pirate ship. I would say five lashes is too lenient, considering that he's immortal anyway and it can't kill him!"

"Very well." Bootstrap sighed nobly. "I'll take his punishment."

Everyone groaned and rolled their eyes again. The newcomer looked very confused. Then the organ music stopped and the lightning flashed double-time as Captain Davy Jones came raging out on deck.

"Mr. Turner!" he growled. "Are ye at it again?"

Bootstrap's lower lip trembled heroically and rain streamed dramatically down his pasty, mournful face.

"It's not right." he said sullenly.

With a long-suffering sigh, Davy reared back his left arm and slammed his giant claw around Bootstrap's neck, pinning him against the conveniently-located mainmast. Some of the crew cheered, but Davy silenced them with a glare. He then returned his attention to his prey, who was staring at him pitifully from behind his sad lanky hair.

"I'll not have ye interfering in the punishment of others," Davy snarled, then added in frustration, "Again!"

"I just—" began Bootstrap tremulously.

"You just nothing!" bellowed Davy. "Now I'll not tolerate another incidence of this nature, are we clear, Mr. Turner?"

He would receive no spoken answer. The response came in the form of an enormous tear that welled up in Bootstrap's eye and trickled tragically down his cheek. It really was a champion teardrop; no one could muster them like Bootstrap Bill. Or, as the crew was beginning to call him when his back was turned; Bootstrap Baby.

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Liars' Dice was really the only game that could entertain a crew of damned pirates. They used to attempt Gin Rummy, but the cards would get destroyed by all the water. They tried chess once, but it lasted about three seconds before the ship tilted and all the pieces slid off the board and a fight broke out. When it came down to it, Liars' Dice was actually the only game that they could play.

Sharkhead and Prickly-Face were just shaking their dice cups when Bootstrap suddenly sat down with them. They groaned and rolled their eyes while he shook his little dice cup stupidly.

"I'm in!" he announced.

"The stakes are ten years, Turner!" Sharkhead growled. "I wouldn't think you'd be interested in such a wager!"

"Of course I am!" he bristled. "I'd love a chance to get rid of ten years of this hell!"

"We're not wagering to lose years, ye daft idiot!" spat Prickly-Face. "We're wagering to gain them!"

"But whyyy?" whimpered Bill.

"Immortality!" was the unanimous response from the damned pirates.

"I hate this place." pouted Bootstrap. "And I hate this game."

"Then leave!" suggested Prickly-Face enthusiastically.

"Couldn't we wager something more... fun?" Bootstrap's puppy-dog eyes were pathetically eager.

"Like what?"

"Like... like..." Suddenly inspired, he patted the top of his head. "My hat!"

"No one wants your stupid hat." Sharkhead snapped. "It's been on your head and it's bloody ugly."

Bootstrap was crestfallen. His shoulders hunched even more than usual, his lower lip emerged in despair, and a stream of water inexplicably sluiced out of his mouth. Everyone watched in amazement as he managed to conjure out of nowhere a gigantic tear that rolled perfectly down his face and into a tiny puddle of sorrow on the deck.

"Get out of the game, Turner, unless you're up to the stakes."

Nodding in regret, Bootstrap rose, clinking his dice cup dejectedly. He paused, hesitated, then piped up, "Maybe we could play Ship, Captain, and Crew!"

- - -

Releasing the Kraken, which used to be really fun, had lately turned into a major pain. Mostly because Bootstrap always pitched such a fuss about it. Once they started to crank the wheel, they were guaranteed to have Turner whining along at their heels, pleading for mercy for the ship at the receiving end of their wrath, griping about how it wasn't fair combat, so on and so forth until someone finally snapped and punched him in the face. Lately, though, even that wasn't enough to stop him, and when the beast was finally summoned he would fling himself hysterically against the railing and squeal, "Noooooo!" like a stuck pig.

It was even worse when they brought aboard potential new recruits. Case in point: today. It was the middle of a very dramatic rainstorm in the middle of the night, and Captain Jones just got a jones to wreck something. They spotted some poor frigate dawdling around out there, minding its own frigate-y business, and before you could say, "Noooooo!" the thing was underwater and the Kraken was swimming back to the depths in a very good mood. Then they had four shivering sailors pissing themselves in terror on the deck of the Flying Dutchman. Everyone was in a very good mood except for the four sailors and, well, you-know-who.

"We can't do this to them!" Bootstrap sniveled. "It's not right!"

"And what do you suggest we do, Mr. Turner?" Davy managed to remain patient by reminding himself of the theory that Bootstrap was trying to get killed to escape his one-hundred year debt, and it was so much sweeter to make him stick it out and suffer.

"We should just give them a strongly-worded warning," Bootstrap sniffled. "Tell them to go back to land, get honest work, get married, have children—"

It was times like this where the idea of killing him was just so tempting. To distract himself, Davy lit his pipe and clenched it between his teeth so tightly that he almost snapped the thing in two.

"Captain, let's be fair." Bootstrap simpered. "They weren't doing no harm, just minding their own—"

To shut him up, Davy farted smoke at him from his creepy cheek tentacle tube thing. That always worked because it gave Bootstrap the heebie-jeebies. It didn't fail him now; Turner yelped and cowered away, his hair all drizzly and his watery eyes desperate. Davy gave him a scalding look which was answered with a ridiculously huge tear that could have held all the sadness in the world.

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Davy was really at the end of his rope with that little bastard. He had hoped that a few years of slavery on the Flying Dutchman would toughen Turner up a bit, make him a little meaner, a lot less pathetic. If anything, that plan was backfiring. As the years went on, Bootstrap only got paler and paler, more and more tragic. Eventually they gave up on ever trying to make him evil. They just accepted him as part of the price to pay for immortality.

To torture him, Davy purposefully sent Bootstrap as his messenger to Jack Sparrow. He could just imagine Turner all trembling and remorseful, the very picture of anguish, slumped against a table or pillar or anything else that could support his melodrama. Of course when he came back to the ship he was beside himself, but it was completely worth it.

The thing that really consoled Davy was the fact that it couldn't get any worse. Sure, Bootstrap Bill was the most annoying creature he'd ever encountered in all his years at sea, but he was learning to cope with it. When things got too difficult, he always had the option of just stuffing the idiot down in the Locker. Right now, it was good to have a stress-reliever around; no one recovered from a claw to the neck like Bootstrap, and since he was always asking for it, Davy never ran out of excuses to throttle the little whiner.

A loud thump interrupted his musings. Amid many dramatic flashes of lightning, Davy stormed up on deck to find Bootstrap once again offering himself to the bosun's whip, his face screwed up in stony determination.

His claw clicked in anticipation as Davy inquired as to the reason for this act of charity. But even the fearsome captain stepped back in horror when he saw that Bootstrap had suddenly acquired an entirely new level of angst, his eyes leaking and his lip jutting out defiantly, impossibly more mournful than before.

"My son." he said with gruff nobility. "He's my son."

Almost in slow-motion, a gigantic tear slipped from his red-rimmed eye and rolled tragically down his face.

And in his head, Davy Jones said, _Bugger._

- - -end!


End file.
